This Week in Taco Bell: The Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit Taco is terrible

Look upon this Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit Taco and despair, for it might just be the worst thing I have ever eaten at Taco Bell:

(USA TODAY Sports)

Mere hours after I sampled Taco Bell’s Biscuit Taco breakfast for the first time, Taco Bell announced that it will provide free Biscuit Tacos to all customers from 7 a.m. to 11 a.m. on May 5, the same day it will introduce its new Diablo Sauce at restaurants nationwide.

But unless some added heat can save the woeful breakfast dish, true Taco Bell enthusiasts will be best served skipping the lines that morning and showing up at 11:15 a.m. for traditional Taco Bell lunch. Thanks, Taco Bell, but no thanks. The Biscuit Taco is terrible.

Before I go on, I should note that I hoped to try the Biscuit Taco in its more heralded, Crispy Chicken incarnation. But though multiple menu items incorporating Crispy Chicken are featured prominently on Taco Bell’s website, they have been mysteriously absent from New York City area Taco Bell locations over the past week.

I sampled two of them — the Spicy Ranch Crispy Chicken Griller and the Chipotle Chickstar — shortly after their release. They were delicious. I planned to name the delightfully seasoned Crispy Chicken as a viable new alternative to Seasoned Beef among Taco Bell proteins, so I tried to procure it in the name of a proper review three different times since Saturday night.

But the Crispy Chicken Grillers and Chickstars did not appear on the menu at my old standby Taco Bell in Hempstead, N.Y. on Saturday nor at a restaurant in Manhattan on Tuesday. On Wednesday morning, two Upper Manhattan Taco Bells still advertised Crispy Chicken Biscuit Tacos on the windows outside. But both had small “Sold Out” signs below the much-promoted item on the menu.

I contacted a Taco Bell spokesperson this morning for an explanation, because I am a good and responsible Taco Bell journalist — maybe the best. Taco Bell has not responded to my inquiry at the time of this post.

UPDATE: I heard back from Taco Bell headquarters. The Crispy Chicken was a limited time offer and “is on its way out.” RIP.

In any case, I settled on a Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit Taco, only to learn that the Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit Taco is bad. It’s not just bad by the enormously high standards I hold for Taco Bell, the Mexican-inspired American fast food chain I love so much I started writing about it regularly. It’s straight-up bad.

The biscuit itself is somehow at once both too greasy and too dry. In the mouth, it feels something like asbestos soaked in vegetable oil, chalky and clammy and altogether unpleasant. And yet despite whatever machinations Taco Bell endeavored to form a biscuit into a taco shape, the shell fell apart in precisely one bite, with parts of it sticking to the sausage inside and others crumbling onto the wrapper below.

The sausage offers little flavor to offset the off-putting texture of the biscuit, and the eggs add only heartburn.

I’m telling you this because I love you, Taco Bell: You can do better. You have done better. So much better. And I recognize that someone down at Taco Bell HQ in Irvine, Calif. probably worked hard to create the Biscuit Taco, and that this review — if he or she sees it — might ruin that person’s day. I feel bad doing it to the same person who has presumably brought me so much joy.

But this continued descent into gimmickry over the zesty, melty deliciousness I have come to expect risks alienating true Taco Bell loyalists. And if I can’t be brave enough to step up and call out Taco Bell on substandard new menu items, who will? Who will?

(Photo: Taco Bell)

The most infuriating part is that Taco Bell keeps marketing offerings like the Biscuit Taco as part of the “Breakfast Revolution” against other fast-food breakfasts, when meanwhile it tastes just like so many other lousy fast-food breakfasts. You took a crummy sausage, egg and cheese biscuit and bent it into a taco shape. That’s not a revolution. That’s just folding.

Back to the drawing board with this one, Taco Bell. Honestly, I would much prefer — and be far more likely to eat — regular Taco Bell food just served at breakfast time and rebranded as appropriate breakfast food. Those distinctions are already murky. Give me an 8 a.m. MexiMelt every day of the week over this Biscuit Taco nonsense.

As far as I’m concerned, this has been the primary issue with Taco Bell Breakfast from Day 1. It needs to be more Taco Bell, less Breakfast.

On to other Taco Bell news:

Fritos Taco shells are coming

Via Eater.com comes word that Tennessee Taco Bells are testing Fritos Tacos. As you may have guessed, I’m something of a Taco Bell purist and never had much time for the Doritos Tacos — though they’re great inside a Cheesy Gordita Crunch, and though they obviously proved a massive success for Taco Bell and presumably helped the chain’s continued expansion and created more Taco Bell restaurants for me to enjoy.

The funny thing, to me, is that a plain Frito is just a corn chip. Right? So isn’t a Fritos Taco just the exact same thing as a regular taco? Maybe it’ll be a little crunchier. That could be cool.

Katy Perry goes to Taco Bell in Japan

Pop star Katy Perry apparently loves Taco Bell enough to wait in line for it in Tokyo. That’s dedication. This site commends Ms. Perry for her commitment to eating Taco Bell, enough so that it will not question her decision to wear what looks like a leather facemask to Taco Bell. Hard to get tacos past that thing.

Taco Bell menu items — especially crunchy ones — don’t keep terribly well, and are typically best eaten in the Taco Bell dining room or in your car, pulled off to the side of the road immediately after you get them from the drive-thru window. So mastering delivery seems like a pipe dream for now, though I’d be thrilled to be surprised.

This Week in Taco Bell: The Sausage, Egg and Cheese Biscuit Taco is terrible

Taco Bell will distribute free breakfast on Cinco de Mayo.

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